How to make your sales team ultra-high-performing from the first contact?

Emotions play a crucial role in our professional lives: that’s a fact. However, these emotions still struggle to find their place in our daily functions. We generally try to confine them to the private sphere, as we don’t know how to leverage them in a professional context.

Yet, these emotions are far from being a disadvantage for a company’s salespeople. They can even transform into powerful levers during the first face-to-face meeting with a prospect: discover the 3 keys to emotional negotiation.

What is Emotional Negotiation?

The concept of emotional negotiation was introduced by Frédéric Bonneton, published by Kawa. He explains that decisions, whether related to a purchase or not, are governed more by emotions than by reason. He then reveals a list of “secrets,” which are all negotiation techniques, to help managers and salespeople leverage emotions and turn them into true levers of persuasion.

Emotional negotiation is not a new concept: the study of emotions, thanks to the rise of neurosciences, has existed for over 20 years. However, Frédéric Bonneton’s analysis is set within a specific context: that of an increasingly digitized sales journey. At a time when good old “face-to-face” meetings are becoming increasingly rare, these now hold fundamental importance: it’s about convincing a busy interlocutor, in about 30 minutes, of the merits of a product or service. Emotions then allow you to stand out from the competition, while leading the prospect to make a purchase.

Key #1: Leverage Paralanguage

Emotional negotiation is primarily based on non-verbal communication. This encompasses all the signals emitted by an interlocutor when speaking: the postures they adopt, the gestures they make, and the intonation of their voice.

All these signs, which can say much more than a long speech, influence a salesperson’s interlocutors. Furthermore, this paralanguage allows access to the true neurological decision-making center: the reptilian brain, which “controls” emotions and whose main objective remains survival.

During a face-to-face meeting, a salesperson must therefore begin by reassuring and seducing the prospect with their gestures and intonation. These elements can play an even more important role than the arguments presented!

Key #2: Adopt an Inductive Approach

The inductive approach is based on a series of questions that guide a client or prospect toward the answer we expect from them. These questions are not trivial: often “closed,” they contain their own answers while leading the prospect to formulate them themselves.

Complex, this type of approach proves effective if the methodology is well mastered. However, the exercise requires significant preparatory work beforehand, so that the salesperson has a roadmap before approaching the prospect face-to-face.

Key #3: Create a Favorable Buying Context

Finally, a successful emotional negotiation must take place in a context conducive to purchase. To do this, your salespeople must not let their prospects gain the upper hand during the negotiation. A simple delay, an attitude, or a tone of voice can lead to an imbalance in the negotiator/client relationship.

From the salesperson’s perspective, it is therefore essential to trigger reactions in the interlocutor rather than passively receiving their statements. The secret: knowing how to create a sense of tension, then counterbalancing it with a feeling of rediscovered happiness that the product will be able to create.

Discover how our client Interfimo boosted its sales performance thanks to Incenteev’s digital solution.